29 posts tagged with "yama"

My mistake with my process is that I am trying to get to new projects all the time. That is actually not the goal. The goal is to get through the routine as fast as possible. So the process shouldn't be to start new projects. The projects exist for the sake of fulfilling the routine. The routine is what matters the most.

So everyday the focus is to get through the routines as fast as possible. As part of the routine. This means a bit more simplicity in that since we are continuously optimizing each part of the routine. The goal is to make the checklists for the daily to be extremely strong.

What is currently transpiring is that I have three sets of trackers Github, Notes, and Google Docs. I keep looking at the Google Docs even though the place I need to keep track which is automated is Github. So I need to get back to Github as the primary source.

This means I will need to migrate to Github completely and off Google Docs. I know I just moved to it. But it is actually easier to manage the improvements as I go through the tasks rapidly in Github.

Another aspect is to go through the routine list before ever reading.

Another year another tax day. I realize that tax day may come once a year, but the stress is year round. The problem I face with taxes is that I consider it as something in the past or something to do in the future. The stress is there year round. This causes all sorts of problems as I never give the taxes their due until the last minute and well I don’t end up doing a good job and likely lose quite a bit in over or under payment. This is a bit annoying to deal with.

So I am forcing taxes to be in the present. They are a daily occurrence and will be handled as part of my daily routine. Like other things that I need to plan for in the future. I don’t do well with calendars, I don’t do well with them. If I bring it to the present and am always dealing with it, it leaves my mind.

Another aspect that I am going to be doing is just paying the estimates that are on the voucher instead of trying to calculate what I owe. This will simplify my taxes as I can just pay what I owe the following April. I was attempting to get an exact calculation trying to play the estimate game, but this is getting confusing.

To be frank the way the IRS does it is actually good because it means you can just focus on growth and not about what taxes you owe. If you just pay the last year’s and you make less you get a refund, if you do better than last year then you get an interest free loan until you have to pay taxes. This is actually a great incentive structure.

The 8 Limbs of Yoga are a pretty great system for giving an end to end system for all aspects of one’s life. I unfortunately divided my life into sevaka and sakha which was supposed to be inner life and outer life which is actually not fruitful. This divides my attention from outer life and inner life even though the point is it is all the same. The outer life informs the inner life.

• I am moving the Team, Capital and Ventures under yama. yama covers Karma Yoga so it makes sense to move the sakha portions under this limb.
• parabrahman is moving under ishvarapranidhana because my goal is to bridge the worship of the East with my life in the West. Further, devotion happens with others so it belongs under this section.
• Move Samaja under Capital. My aspiration with Samaja is to understand the Capital markets. So it is migrated under the Capital section.
• I am moving the biographies section in Yama into Niyama under Gurus. The biographies are actually mechanisms for creating Bhakti and thus fall under niyama.
• Migrate sakha to yama. sakha doesn’t exist independently and is moved to yama.
• Move the sakha blogposts to yama. All the sakha blog posts are now yama blog posts.
• Got rid of the sevaka and sakha altogether. Flattening the structure. Flatting sevaka and move the writing into index
• Update daily to be flattened.
• Moved Bhakti Sutras to be under niyama.
• Move Hinduism study section under niyama to isvarapranidana
• Move guru section under study
• Merge classics in ventures under yama
• Split itihasa and Puranas into Yama and niyama

I have started to hate the unfettered capitalism that has lead to the private equity industry which has taken over a large portion of America. It loads up each company with debt and destroys the value of the individual business. However I do find the structure of private equity to be useful. It is an effective strategy because it separates the concerns of the capital from the concerns of the venture. While the venture needs to grow to sustain itself, it is not concerned per se with finances. It is a product that is grown independently.

In that regard I have divided the sakha into three specific components:

• Capital. Will focus on financials and taxes.
• Team. Focused on hiring and training. Standardizing experiences of the team that we hire.
• Ventures. Building specific businesses with a focus on free cash flow.

This structure allows me to have the sakha focused completely on the world. The sevaka piece can then focus on the inner world. The goal is to split the focus such that everything I do is pushed out into the the buckets of the inner world and outer world.

One of the big problems I had was that I was incorporating a lot of the outer world into the sevaka path. While yama can be considered Karma Yoga, it should be more to learn how to be a Karma Yogi not necessarily the tactical aspects. The part should be completely moved to the sakha path.

The inner world includes a lot of things including meditation, gardening, cleaning, exercise, and study. All of these are important and can all be done during the sevaka time. Overall this simplifies a lot of my goals.

I am moving back to Github Actions hosted by Microsoft and away from self-hosting. The gist of the way things lie at the moment are that we will be having higher energy prices which will translate to higher compute costs and things that are JIT will be a bit more cost effective at the moment.

This means removing unnecessary compute actions and such.

opsZero is reaching a decade in age. While I have grown it I have made a lot of mistakes which I want to address systematically. Second, opsZero is going to be standardized allowing us to grow in a consistent manner and as a single brand. Lastly, with the geopolitical situation access to compute is going to become more important and we will be returning to a world moving away from the Cloud and focused on cost and efficiency.

While we will have to address the situation of opsZero, the Iran War has created a new World Order in which the East dominates and power will wholesale move out of the West. One of the pillars of this new world will be India. As the value of the dollar shrinks the only outcome for a lot of Western companies is to move their bases to India.

Failures​

opsZero's focus has been scattered in terms of technology and business. We have moved the business into areas that are just not our core competency. Here are a list of our failures:

• Partnerships. We have focused too much on partnerships and they haven’t yielded much. Most of the partners we have worked with have gone bankrupt or have been dismantled. I met some interesting people but overall not useful in terms of revenue generation. I would even state that the AWS Partnership is a failure. These companies have gone full blown into AI putting an immense amount of CapEx with the expectation that it will replace humans. Ironically, this is destroying the human relationships that power these businesses in the first place.
• Ventures. Multiple brands, multiple APIs, different services, etc. while fun are a waste of time. It is diffusing the energy of the company on too many things and makes it difficult to communicate to the team what we are working on. It makes more sense to have a single brand of opsZero and add additional levers to that brand.
• Sales. Because of the different brands it has become hard to sell as each brand requires a different set of expertise. The gist of it is that we are a DevOps Agency with a focus on Cloud + AI. That is the core of the company and it is on top of that we add additional capabilities. However, my sales has been honestly not this. It has been going all over the place. There is no core focus that everything else is built around.
• Resale. We decided to do reselling which is a painful business that is not worth the time. It is low margin, the APIs are annoying, the taxes confusing and so on. The time and energy I focused on it the last two years were largely pointless. I should have focused on other things like growing revenue without the need of an AWS. Reselling isn’t glamorous and is monotonous.

Standardization​

Because of the failures listed above we will be changing the business. For the next stage of our growth we are going to focus on a few things and deemphasize many others.

1. One Brand. Everything will be under the opsZero brand. No ifs and buts. I will no longer be dealing with multiple brands. It is just a pain to deal with and we already have the opsZero brand being strong anyways so it doesn't make sense to manage multiple brands.
2. Product First. We will incrementally release new product under opsZero. Since we are limiting the focus to just opsZero.com it will make it easier to develop.
3. Aggressive Direct Sales. We will build our own sales team that will be aggressive in nature looking to grow the company.
4. Limited Resell. We will only do resell if it makes sense, it is not the core part of our business. We will only do resale for companies we provide DevOps services.
5. Limited Partnerships. We are going to do direct sales and focus our energies on that. We will only do partnerships if there is value. Going direct to customer is better than having an in between. What this means is growing the company internally. To focus on increasing the size of the company.

Verticals​

opsZero has been chasing every niche and this hasn't been fruitful. This has us chasing enterprises, SMBs, startups, etc., etc. This has proven to be ineffective. Each industry has a different tempo, requirements and style. Each is different from the other and we haven't created a tempo of outreach. Chasing after healthcare companies is difficult versus chasing after enterprise, etc.

So we will focus on just three verticals that are under served and where we can drive a lot of value:

1. Startups. I do believe that the startup ecosystem will move to India and the USA market will dry up as capital costs increase due to the Iran War. So new startups will largely die off, but for the time being this is still a primary area we need to go after.
2. SMB. There are a lot of SMBs in second tier cities that don't have expertise that need DevOps. We can gain significant leverage in these areas.
3. Healthcare. Focus on healthcare and the needs of healthcare customers.
4. SLED. City and local governments will need support as their taxes crash when the US economy tanks. They will need to be more efficient. SLED is complex but it will allow us to become sticky overtime.

Solutions​

We are diversifying from the Cloud to be more Hybrid Cloud. Especially, with the Iranian attacks on the AWS UAE data centers the age of centralization is over. As the American Empire crumbles the centralization of power into American companies like AWS also starts to reduce. So decentralization becomes the norm again.

• DevOps. The basis of our go to market. We do all DevOps with OpenTofu/Terraform as the basis.
• Kubernetes. Kubernetes is our bread and butter. We will focus on making this the core of our value. Moving Windows, Linux, etc. workloads to Kubernetes is a primary goal.
• Identity. Setup and manage identity solutions.
• Compliance. Focusing on HIPAA, SOC2, PCI-DSS, etc.
• Datasets. Build and host core datasets for companies that want to use these for their own specific use cases.
• DBA. Database and performance tuning to lower the cost of compute for companies.
• AI. Low cost AI compute solutions such as running workloads on Macs, etc.
• FinOps. Resale business, but we will likely limit to just the Cloud.

One of the goals with the products side is to focus on build out using open source.

New World Order​

With the Iran War we will see a rather fast destruction of the American Empire. Wealth and power will move to the East specifically India and China. Incidentally, I also think this means multinationals will move East as well. With a drop in the dollar and a lack of growth opportunities in the US a period of stagflation will take over the country and a debt crisis will essentially cut the dollar's value by 50%. Low growth and high inflation means hiring people in the US becomes an economic burden resulting in wholesale migration of jobs East.

Multinationals are not inherently tied to a location. They move as needed to different jurisdictions based on their focus on profitability. This is nothing new and has been a constant throughout history. This disadvantages SMBs and startups that don’t have these relationships or ability to build businesses in India. Migration of these roles to India is the area that we will target.

However, as multinationals and other companies didn’t die when the British Empire collapsed there is a way to get through to the other side of the American Collapse. We need to understand that we are moving to a:

• Low Energy. As Middle East War rages the amount of energy drops by 25% for the foreseeable future. Low energy will also affect other things such as chips and food. Overall, energy becomes exceedingly expensive.
• Resource Poor. With energy going up the amount of resources such as capital that is available to people and businesses will reduce. This means there will likely be less capital intensive businesses that will become the norm.

To address this situation we must force ourselves towards two specific goals.

• Low cost. We will focus on being the low cost provider. Our goal is to drive costs further down.
• Standardization. Standardize all parts of the business and continuously reduce costs for ourselves and our customers.

Hindurastra​

Lastly, the goal of our business is to strengthen and turn India into a Hindurastra. As the American Empire dies, Sanatana Dharma will be a dominant force in the world. India will have a difficult time for the next few years, but once the 30s come along there will be a rapid acceleration of energy and focus with India becoming one of the major forces alongside China.

When this happens Indians will notice that Hindu Dharma is the driving force of the world. With Buddhism in China or Yoga in America. This will lead to a recognition of India's spiritual contribution to the world and a return to our roots. The timeframe around the 2040s is when India will become a spiritual power again.

So our goal until then is to grow internally using Sanatana Dharma as our core.

To get started in my reading I am focusing my energies on a few sections:

• Biographies. Read biographies of saints and yogis.
• Meditation. Learn the foundations of meditation.
• Cooking. Learn how to cook well.

This also includes a general study of the Hanuman Chalisa, Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita. The goal is to deepen the study of these three texts.

However, to understand the texts is to study the saints who lived the yogic life. The stories are easier to remember than prescriptions so that is the focus of my energies. Once the stories are internalized then I can then understand the Bhakti and Prayer. The Sadhana portion is there to remove the blemishes and figure out how to lead a more yogic life.

The goal is to build devotion. It is not at this point to decern Brahman or get into pure meditation. It is to purify myself and to get into a belief of Isvara without doubt.

It is easy to ruminate on the past and future of a business but it is hard to see where you are in the present. Data forces you to understand the present. Once you have figured out the present and always clearing out anything in the past or future then you can clear your mind to the capabilities you have and remove anything that does not provide value.

The data fueled present is much like meditation for an individual. It forces a company to also be in th present.

AI is a disruptive force. I was skeptical about its impact but now seeing the rapid developments by Anthropic I can say I am now a convert. While in 2025 AI was in development stage at this point we are in an accelerated implementation stage.

There are some significant changes I see happening:

• More work will be expected out of fewer people. Companies like Tata, Infosys and other outsourcing firms will likely require more output per person as AI can fulfill a lot of the simple tasks. Specialists will likely be turned into AI tools. The people doing the tasks will become reviewers, not writers.
• As people and companies build their own tooling specific to their company’s use case the need for data becomes more important. Data becomes a way of building tools.
• Services as a business model will be impacted. If companies can put together their own custom solutions targeting their needs with AI tools guiding them then the need for services becomes niche. Companies will hire consultants for specific cases not for general purpose.
• AI will make everyone entrepreneurs. The cost of building something is going way, way down. While there will be slop, we are going to rapidly be able to create new things. The cycle of creative destruction will speed up. New products can be created and launched rapidly. We are back to the MVP world where even Microsoft is shipping junk product to iterate quickly. Yes, there will be slop but this is a matter of normality for most startups. So slop in of itself is not that problematic.

What does it mean for us?

We are going to transition to becoming an AI first product company. We will be focusing less and less on services and will be completely focused on products that have AI at the core. The products will be based around being inputs for AI to make additional decisions around.

The goal is for us to launch a product quickly, set up the processes for improvement, and sell and market with a few workers. This will require a mindset shift in the way we work. Currently, we have a services mindset where delivering high quality work to customers is expected instead we need to change to a mindset of velocity.

Some things we need to do:

• Launch fast. We need to launch new initiatives quickly. The market will tell us based on if people buy our products or not.
• Less permissions needed. Everyone should be able to build and deploy new features without asking for permissions. We will have a few criteria but everyone should be able to launch as needed.
• Vibe code, deploy and test. Build quickly using vibe coding. Use AI tools to launch new offerings.

As I contemplate sevaka and samaja, I realized that the sevaka exists to promote Sanatana Dharma. I want people trained within the framework to use it to promote Santana Dharma. Having a separate samaja pillar doesn't make sense with that. So samaja will be merged back into sevaka under yama. The goal is to outgrow the ego, and promotion of Sanatana Dharma is the way to accomplish that task.

Sevaka exists to build good character, to lead society. A sevaka is also a representation of society. So society should not be something separate from that world view.

Lastly, this simplifies what had before the focus. There should be two focuses sevaka and sakha. The sakha is the business units to help society. The sevaka is a part building and influencing society.